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THE NEW YORKER, APRIL 11, 2016
twirling each other, until four other
women joined, and they formed a circle,
clasping hands.
T , Ivy left Emma's
apartment at . . to catch a train
back to Chappaqua. The family she
worked for was on a ski vacation, and she
needed to feed their dog, cat, goldfish,
and hamster. For a week, she would be
the only one in the house, which resem-
bled a resort, with a pool surrounded by
a white picket fence, a gazebo, a wine cel-
lar, and a gym with half a dozen exercise
machines. Once she arrived, Ivy had to
charge her phone every few hours, be-
cause she kept texting and messaging
friends and family on Facebook. "I am
so lonely I want to shout," she texted
Emma. "Shout!"Emma responded. "Your
boss is not there!"
When I visited Ivy a few days after
the party, she seemed transformed by the
suburbs: she padded through the house
in Crocs, black yoga pants, and a red
sweatband around her forehead. Using
her boss's NutriBullet blender, she served
me a smoothie in a wineglass. She dis-
played a mastery of the labyrinthine house
that seemed to come from deep acquain-
tance with any signs of disorder. "This is
my territory," she said, as we walked up-
stairs to the third floor. Across from the
laundry room, which had two sets of in-
dustrial-sized washers and dryers, was
her large, sparsely furnished bedroom,
the carpet freshly vacuumed. Above her
bed, Ivy had taped a letter from the young-
est boy she nannied, whom she called her
alaga, a Tagalog word that refers to a pet
or a person who is cared for. "I love love
Ivy so so much," he had written, under a
circle of hearts. Next to the note was a
collage of photographs, labelled "My Fam-
ily," with eighteen pictures of the Chap-
paqua children, their parents, and their
grandparents, and two of Ivy's family in
the Philippines. The year before, at Ivy's
request, her family had gone to a studio
in Zamboanga City and posed for a pho-
tographer, who had then doctored a dig-
ital image of Ivy (taken at the bar mitz-
vah of one of the boys she nannied) and
inserted her between her husband and
her middle son.
Ivy told me that she had been upset all
morning, since checking Facebook: her
son had posted a picture of Costco choc-
olates, a Valentine's Day gift, without ac-
knowledging that she had sent it. "You
guys are just ignoring me," she told her
husband on Skype. To make herself feel
better, Ivy thought about how her sons
were more respectful than the children she
nannied---they yelled at their mother as if
it were not a big deal---but the thought
wasn't particularly reassuring. "I keep pray-
ing every night that one day my kids will
appreciate what I did," she told me. "For
now, I know that they don't."
She worried about the strength of her
own attachments, too. The night before,
she had rushed o the phone with her
husband, so that she could hear Emma's
voice before going to sleep. "I am expect-
ing Mom's call," she told him. Then she
felt guilty that her priorities were becom-
ing skewed. Ivy had been in New York
for a third of the time that Emma had,
and she sensed that Emma, who had pro-
gressed to a later stage of homesickness,
didn't need her as much as she needed
Emma. When I mentioned that I'd seen
Emma the day before, Ivy asked, "What
did she say about me? Is she happy with
me?" Emma was familiar with Ivy's inse-
curities. She explained to Ivy, "You really
changed my life---you support me in every
way. But there are times when I am busy
and can't talk." Sometimes Emma told
Ivy to talk to her third daughter, Elaine
May, who flooded her with Facebook
messages to which she couldn't respond
quickly enough.
As a cure for her loneliness, Ivy had
decided that in the spring she would
look for a job in the city and move into
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